ITV Trades Blows With BBC In Saturday Showdown

A raft of high profile programmes failed to secure victory for ITV on Saturday, as the broadcaster continually failed to top the BBC’s audiences for established prime time favourites.

ITV secured victory later on in the evening, however, as the results of its earlier programmes topped those of the BBC.

ITV’s X Factor was the first show of the evening to go head to head with the BBC, facing up to Strictly Come Dancing to score an average audience of 6.8 million adults, compared with the Corporation’s 8.5 million.

Next came Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, drawing 5.8 million against the BBC’s National Lottery: Jet Set, which achieved an average adult audience of 7.2 million in the same time slot.

The X Factor Results performed better for ITV, scoring 7.5 million on average, while the BBC’s competing Casualty drew 7 million, as did the results of Strictly Come Dancing, shown immediately afterwards.

The BBC’s new comedy series Carrie and Barrie provided a low point in the night’s viewing, drawing just 2.7 million between 9:30-10pm, while ITV’s I’m A Celebrity and Parkinson performed well, drawing 6.9 million and 4.3 million respectively.

Elsewhere, the BBC and ITV’s large audiences left few viewers for Channel 4, which drew a disappointing 1.8 million with its film, Road To Perdition. Meanwhile Five scored an audience of 2 million with crime drama, CSI, despite going head to head with ITV’s I’m A Celebrity.

Overnight data is available each morning in mediatel.co.uk‘s TV Database, with all BARB registered subscribers able to view reports for terrestrial networks, ITV2 and Sky One.

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